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Friday, June 30, 2017

Wonder Woman is not your standard superhero film in many ways, the most important being the balance of sound and score. Previous research indicates that superhero films contain 1) a score buried underneath explosions and 2) an essentially forgettable score. James Buhler and David Neumeyer note that “however effective and appropriate these scores are in themselves, the trend that they represent has occasionally been criticized for resulting in a slick but somewhat anonymous style.”[1]Wonder Woman, though filled with the action-packed battle scenes and spectacular sound effects that we have come to expect from male-centered adventure films, contains a score written by composer Rupert Gregson-Williams that is equally balanced with these sound effects. He succeeded in composing a soundtrack that is distinguishable and memorable, providing more basis that Wonder Woman is a different kind of superhero movie.

Wonder Woman’s score evokes the work of Hans Zimmer, which is not surprising, as Gregson-Williams worked under Zimmer. Indeed, the two-note motif associated with Diana’s electric cello theme is highly reminiscent of the Kraken theme heard in Zimmer’s Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest. However, unlike Zimmer’s treatment of Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy (2005–2012), which critics accused of “recycling too many musical ideas from the established tropes of Zimmer’s previous scores,” Gregson-Williams created a soundtrack with distinct musical ideas, while still including Zimmer’s and Junkie XL’s original Wonder Woman theme from Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016).[2]

Not all films need be as leitmotif-driven as Howard Shore’s Lord of the Rings or John Williams’s Star Wars, but cohesiveness of audible musical ideas can serve a valuable function in unifying a film’s broader narrative arc. Wonder Woman contains two important associative-thematic cues (as Grace Edgar describes them) heard during sound effect-heavy scenes: “Amazons of Themyscira” and Diana’s Wonder Woman theme. (See Grace Edgar and Jessica Getman’s posts for transcriptions of these themes.) Janet Halfyard writes that in superhero films, the hero’s theme is typically “present and directly connected to action, but no single version of the theme is used so extensively that it becomes the sole identifier of the hero.”[3] She indicates that Williams’s Superman and Danny Elfman’s Batman themes employed this technique, and Gregson-Williams likewise uses this strategy to paint a sonic portrait of Wonder Woman. However, Wonder Woman’s score is mixed more evenly with sound effects than recent superhero film soundtracks, indicating that Diana’s story is being told in the music as much as it is on-screen.

NPR reports that Gregson-Williams worked extensively on the cue for “No Man’s Land,” which accompanies one of the most important scenes in the film. For the first time, the audience sees the updated, female-gaze perspective on Diana’s battle gear, which director Patty Jenkins emphasized is “total wish-fulfillment” and “should be appealing to women.” During this scene, the Germans fire ammunition and throw grenades at Diana, who deflects them with her gauntlets and shield. This could have been a sound effects-driven scene, with the music mixed low enough so as to be “inaudible.” Instead, the battle sounds and the music, a development of the “Amazons of Themyscira” theme heard previously during Diana’s sparring lessons, are evenly balanced, with neither one overpowering the other. Diana, unlike many of her male superhero counterparts, fights for love and not power or recognition, fulfilling her duties as an Amazon warrior, and the equal balancing of thematic and diegetic sound helps to convey these crucial character traits. In fact, Jenkins had Gregson-Williams edit the cue for this scene several times before she was satisfied. The final result is a powerful scene, which had many viewers reduced to tears.

I thought I heard an electric guitar in Wonder Woman’s theme, first presented after the “No Man’s Land” sequence when she storms into a warehouse full of German soldiers to fight them single-handedly. However, this is actually performed by concert and soundtrack soloist Tina Guo on the electric cello. Although there has been no research on the use of solo electric orchestral string instruments in film, the electric guitar has been used widely in Western concert works and soundtracks. Ben Jameson notes that the electric guitar conjures up a variety of images, particularly counterculture movements and rebellions.[4] However, Steve Waksman points out that the electric guitar can also reinforce the “marginalization of women and ethnic minorities” because of its association with white men.[5] The first two Iron Man scores contained electric guitar, and Jon Burlingame associates this with “the brashness of Tony Stark.”[6] In the third Pirates film, Hans Zimmer included a solo electric guitar when the main six characters meet to parley, giving it an American Western/showdown vibe. The use of the electric cello for Wonder Woman’s theme emphasizes Diana’s – dare I say it – badassery, since the instrument has not been commonly used in traditional film scores, and therefore does not carry the associations of the electric guitar. Additionally, viewers (like myself) think they hear an electric guitar, associated with the masculine, but it turns out to be a cello (associated with the female voice) electrified. The instrumentation is outside the norms, as Diana does not conform to traditional gender roles and stereotypes. This all supports Jenkins’s goal of portraying a “badass” Wonder Woman.

Diana’s theme and sound effects are yet again balanced in this scene as they were in “No Man’s Land,” and work together to showcase Diana’s warrior skills as she slides deftly along the floor and leaps out a window. Her theme is also presented during her fight with General Ludendorff, who she thinks is Ares but isn’t. The “Amazons of Themyscira” cue becomes more strongly associated with Diana during the climactic sequence between her and Sir Patrick Morgen, who is actually Ares. In both cases, her themes are as prominent heard as the sound effects. These presentations indicate that the music is just as important as what is occurring visually on screen and are meant to be experienced as a whole.

Gregson-Williams presents discernible musical themes without patterning his score on a Wagnerian model, and the soundtrack evenly balances music with sound effects during battle scenes, an unusual mixing decision since the development of Dolby surround sound in the 1980s. Critics and viewers have applauded the film’s representation of women both on- and off-screen. Gregson-Williams’s soundtrack also reflects Diana’s Amazonian warrior values and provides a model for future superhero scores. More memorable thematic cues that are balanced with sound effects in action-packed scenes should be applied to break the trope of forgettable superhero soundtracks.

Caitlan Truelove recently graduated from Syracuse University with a Master of Music in Violin Performance and a Certificate in University Teaching. Her research interests include gender and music, performance practice, and film music. More information can be found here.

Wednesday, June 28, 2017

The creative team behind Wonder Woman faced no simple task: they had to create a stand-alone film that would still fit neatly into the DC Extended Universe (DCEU), a franchise that includes 2013’s Man of Steel and 2016’s Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice, both directed by Zack Snyder.[2] For the most part, Wonder Woman adopts Snyder’s visual and musical aesthetics, but morally, Wonder Woman grapples with very different issues. If Snyder’s Batman and Superman represent various incarnations of Nietzsche’s Übermensch, Wonder Woman is faced with with a problem most famously described by Hannah Arendt: the banality of evil.[3] And while the basic material of Rupert Gregson-Williams’s score for Wonder Woman resembles Hans Zimmer’s scores for Man of Steel and Batman v. Superman (the latter a collaboration with Junkie XL), there are some key differences in the way Gregson-Williams handles the villains that speak to these different moral universes. While Zimmer constructs his heroes and villains from entirely different sound palettes, Gregson-Williams scores his characters---good and evil alike---with remarkably similar sounds, indicating that ordinary people are capable of evil under the right circumstances, a key component of Arendt’s moral philosophy.

Both Man of Steel and Batman v. Superman focus on exceptional individuals who wield their power for either good or evil. The genocidal alien General Zod is defeated by the good alien Superman. The brilliant billionaire Lex Luthor leads others astray in his dastardly plot, only to be foiled by the equally brilliant billionaire Batman (with some help from Superman and Wonder Woman). Heroes may occasionally tiptoe across the line between good and evil (Batman’s branding of criminals for instance), but there is no question as to which people are virtuous and which are not. In all cases, evil is dispatched by exceptional individuals, who are allowed to operate outside the bounds of conventional morality in the name of protecting humanity.

This clear distinction between good and evil comes across on the soundtracks, in which heroes and villains inhabit completely different sound worlds. In Man of Steel, General Zod arrives accompanied by a blend of atonal electronic drones and whines, pulsing hisses, and low brass tremolos. These contrast markedly with the firmly tonal rising figure that accompanies Superman. That rising figure is almost always on a recognizable acoustic instrument, while Zod is primarily scored with electronic or electronically manipulated sounds. The result is that Zod sounds “alien,” while Superman (despite his Kryptonian heritage) sounds “human.” In Batman v. Superman, Luthor is accompanied by galumphing rhythms in the harpsichord, followed by strange pizzicato ticking, and manic baroque violins, betraying a complex, if fractured mind. Meanwhile, Batman is all low strings, brass, and percussion, indicating seriousness of purpose and single-mindedness. (Superman has the same theme as the previous film).

But evil in Wonder Woman is a more complex phenomenon. If in the earlier films, evil is something that happens to humanity, in Wonder Woman, evil comes from within humanity. Diana initially believes man is inherently good, but has been corrupted by Ares, the God of War. But she’s in for a shock when she discovers that Ares is not masquerading as the obviously malevolent General Ludendorff. In a particularly Arendtian twist, Ares turns out to be a mid-level official—just one cog in what Arendt called “the intricate bureaucratic setup of the […] machinery of destruction” (Eichmann in Jerusalem, 211). Arendt realized the genocidal madmen of the world cannot succeed without the cooperation of ordinary people meticulously (but unquestioningly) carrying out their orders (Eichmann in Jerusalem, 153). The most dangerous evil manifests not as psychopaths like Zod, Luthor, or Ludendorff, but in the thoughtlessness of everyday routine. Indeed, Ares reveals to Diana that mankind’s pettiness, small-mindedness, and shallowness are at the root of the destruction; all he does is supply the tools. It is Steve Trevor who pronounces the moral of the movie: we are all to blame---not just the Dr. Poisons and Ludendorffs of the world, but everyone who turns a blind eye to suffering in the name of “just doing their job.”

But like Wonder Woman, Arendt wrestled with humanity’s imperfections and concluded that the world was worth loving. She wrote that an “understanding heart” was “the greatest gift man could receive and desire.” For it is only the human heart that “will take upon itself the burden that the divine gift of action, of being a beginning and therefore being able to make a beginning, has placed upon us.” This capacity for compassion “makes it bearable for us to live with other people, strangers for ever, in the same world, and makes it possible for them to bear with us” (Essays in Understanding, 322). This is the lesson Diana learns by the end of the film. Just as she is ready to wash her hands of humanity, she is reminded of the power of compassion through her feelings for Steve, imperfect as he is. “I believe in love,” she tells Ares as she strikes the final blow.

The thematic development of the cue “Pain, Loss, & Love” shows the power of compassion in a particularly Arendtian way. While the visual track would have us believe that Wonder Woman draws strength from her love for Steve, the score tells us that this “love” is something more akin to Arendt’s “understanding heart.” This theme represents Diana’s experience of loss and tragedy, first occurring at the death of Antiope.[5] Later, the theme accompanies the moment Diana discovers the slaughtered village of Veld, and realizes that Steve and her friends are just as much to blame for the tragedy as the Germans. Their narrow-minded devotion to the mission meant that they were willing to sacrifice Veld in the name of finding Ludendorff’s stockpile of gas, a decision Diana cannot accept. After that, she becomes increasingly disillusioned, eventually declaring her intention to give up on humanity. But just as Diana is on the verge giving in to her anger, the theme reappears in a triumphant form as she comes to another revelation: “They are all that you say,” she admits to Ares, “but so much more.” The fact that this theme (rather than the love theme) accompanies her epiphany indicates that the “love” she feels is not limited to Steve. By bringing back the music that played during Diana’s greatest tragedies (all wrought by a corrupted humanity), the score indicates she accepts humanity’s flaws, and affirms her commitment to “bear with” them anyway. Defeating Ares will not prevent another war, but she decides that humanity has earned a shot at overcoming their darker demons without his interference.

This “love,” or what Arendt would call an “understanding heart” differentiates Wonder Woman from Batman and Superman. Superman protects humanity from outside threats, and Batman roots out the bad apples. Only Wonder Woman grapples with the question of whether or not humanity is worth saving. Having faced that question, she insists on living in (and loving) the world as it is, enabling her to see the good in everyone, even Batman’s bad apples. Her “understanding heart” allows her to forge that new beginning that Arendt so prized.

Naomi Graber is Assistant Professor of Musicology at the University of Georgia. She earned her Ph.D. at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a dissertation on Kurt Weill’s early American works. In addition to her research on the pre-Oklahoma! Broadway musical, she is interested in musical theatre and film of the post-9/11 era, particularly in issues of gender. Her work appears in Studies in Musical Theatre and at Trax on the Trail, and is forthcoming in the Journal of the Society for American Music and the Musical Quarterly.

[1] I’m grateful to Mark Graber for his help in clarifying the ideas of Hannah Arendt that occur throughout this essay.[2] The 2016 film Suicide Squad is also part of the DCEU, but it’s themes are not relevant to this paper. In that film, questions of “good” and “evil” are less prominent than are questions of “normal” and “deviant.”[3] Zack Snyder has stated that Batman v. Superman draws heavily on Frank Miller’s 1986 series The Dark Knight Returns, in which Superman plays a major part. On the Nietzschean aspects of The Dark Knight Returns (and Batman in general), see Tony Spanakos, “Governing Gotham,” 2008. As Marco Pellittier observes, the concept of the Übermensch is often mis-applied to modern superheroes (“Alan Moore, Watchmen and some notes on the ideology of superhero comics,” 2011). The “Nietzschean” issues at play in Snyder’s films are somewhat distorted. Nietzschean philosophy is slightly better represented (and critiqued with more nuance) in The Dark Knight Returns.[4] The obvious exception is the “Wonder Woman” theme in the electric cello, which Gregson-Williams inherited from Zimmer and Junkie XL’s score to Batman v. Superman, in which Diana/Wonder Woman plays a very different narrative role. Consequently, that theme rarely appears in the film. As Jessica Getman and Caitlan Truelove have observed in this series, Gregson-Williams composed a new theme for Wonder Woman that better captures the character in this context, and that theme is consistent with the rest of the score.[5] This version of the theme is the one that accompanies Antiope’s death; the commercial release of the soundtrack is out of order.

Monday, June 26, 2017

Despite Steve Trevor’s attempts to convince her otherwise, Diana continued to insist that Ares was behind The Great War. In the end she was right, and she saved the world.

Wonder Woman(2017, dir. Patty Jenkins) is remarkable as a film that employs narrative conventions from both the male superhero epic and the female coming-of-age story. As a classic hero’s journey, it narrates Diana’s origin story as she leaves her home on the protected Amazonian island of Themyscira, crossing a threshold into the “world of men,” facing the ordeal at Veld to confirm her true identity as a warrior, and emerging even stronger after the pain of Steve’s death and her choice to believe in humanity’s potential for love. As Robynn Stilwell has pointed out, “boys’ stories are outward and linear,” and require the main character to overcome obstacles as they complete their quest. Diana, too, quests outward and through several barriers, moving away from home without returning. In remaining true to this masculine narrative, the creators of the Wonder Woman film very purposefully position Diana as an equally viable and inspirational hero in the male-dominated DC Extended Universe.

But they also imbue the film with conventions of the girls’ coming-of-age narrative, which (again from Stilwell) “tend to be inward and circular as girls discover themselves, usually in relationship to others,” as part of a network of relationships. These stories follow the main character as she matures, and usually bring her back home in the end, either to her parents or to a new husband. While Diana does not return “home” in this sense, the film clearly depicts her growing understanding of the world and her destiny as the God Killer.

The film also—and most strikingly—emphasizes Diana’s voice. Unlike the typical girls’ narrative, in which the main character generally moves from assertive, to silent, and finally to expressing herself within the confines of a socially acceptable feminine identity (see Stilwell), Diana maintains her assertive nature throughout, loudly and without shame, despite attempts to confine her. She concedes to social norms (as in the shopping scene) only to clear the path she knows to be right. Diana’s insistence that she was born of clay, that her Amazonian clothes are necessary for fighting, that the life of the individual civilian or soldier is as valuable as the life of the general, and that Ares is in the world and at play, rarely falters. Try as the people around her might to correct and silence her, she refuses to be shushed. Even the structure of the film itself, which begins and ends with a voiceover by current-day Diana, moves against tradition to centralize her voice; as Kaja Silverman claims, female voiceovers in Hollywood film are historically rare, partial, and unreliable. Wonder Woman challenges the traditional trajectory of the maturing woman’s expression of self, presenting a female hero with a remarkably unshakable and audible voice, who sets out on her quest with no intention of returning home, and who, along the way, discovers her true nature in concert with those around her.

The film’s play with narrative conventions is paralleled by the choices of composer Rupert Gregson-Williams. As Grace Edgar and Caitlan Truelove (forthcoming) point out, Gregson-Williams inherited the project from Hans Zimmer and Junkie XL, who provided the soundtrack for Batman v. Superman (2016, dir. Zack Snyder), and who composed the striking electric-cello Wonder Woman theme employed in Wonder Woman’s “No Man’s Land” sequence and elsewhere.

Gregson-Williams faced the challenge of writing a score that employed this theme sparingly—in its full form, the theme is too far from the musical language of his score to be used more than a few times. (It should be noted, however, that as a composer at Remote Control Productions, Gregson-Williams did employ a number of Zimmerisms; see Frank Lehman’s essay on Zimmer’s aesthetic.) He also needed to express Diana’s development from a young, idealistic girl into the warrior who inspires this music. His response was to a write new theme for Diana, drawn from the Wonder Woman theme. He associates it with the Amazons of Themyscira.

The melody and chordal accompaniment of this theme remains, in whole or in part, connected with Diana throughout the film (notice the reappearance of the i – VI – III - VII progression in the Hero theme, below—a progression that notably hints at the relative major). It accompanies her long after she’s left the island, and is with her as she fights the German forces in Veld, as she defies Steve and attends the armistice gala, as she mourns the citizens of Veld after they have been gassed, as she later overcomes Ares, and as she stands at the top of a building overlooking modern London in the last shot of the film. It draws from Zimmer and Junkie XL’s Wonder Woman theme first the rising third (adding a passing tone), and then the rising triad, lightly foreshadowing the power Diana will wield in those moments when we hear the Wonder Woman theme. But even after we hear Zimmer and Junkie XL’s distinctive theme in “No Man’s Land,” the Amazon theme remains. As with the strong sense of self and voice she maintains throughout the film, her scoring demonstrates that the powerful Diana who left Themyscira remains the same idealistic, Amazonian woman.

One of the refreshing musical choices in this film is the use of a powerful fanfare in Diana’s heroic moments, one that recalls the rising open intervals of Zimmer’s Superman theme. (An analysis of the gendered topoi in this soundtrack will unfortunately have to be left for another study.) In fact, Gregson-Williams applies this theme not only to her heroic feats, but to a number of heroic acts performed by various characters throughout the film—she shares this theme with others.

This theme sounds in the string section when Hippolyta explains that Zeus used the last of his power to stop Ares, and then when Steve insists to his superiors in the war room that they should save their soldiers from Dr. Maru’s new mustard gas; we hear it again, this time in the horns, when Steve, his friends, and all the soldiers at Veld run after Diana into no man’s land. Thus, the heroism in this film is shared, and not wielded by Diana alone. This choice can be interpreted as emphasizing the collaborative nature of a superhero who works as part of a team and who inspires those around her, but it also could be due to the existence of Steve Trevor’s own full, heroic arc; this more general theme allowed Gregson-Williams to highlight his noble moments without centralizing him further.

The focus on Diana as the primary hero is maintained, as well, through the sparing use of the love theme. In Hollywood film, the love theme is traditionally assigned to the female love-interest and acts as her theme, equating that music with her primary purpose in the film (see Rebecca Fülöp’s work on the Feminine Romantic Cliché). In this instance, however—because the film’s primary hero is a woman and because her love interest is a man—Gregson-Williams inserts some distance between these characters and the love theme.

We hear the love theme only a few times in the film: in the caverns of Themyscira when Diana sees Steve stepping out of the pool; when she tells Steve about Clio’s treatises on body and pleasure; in Veld when Diana invites Steve into her room; and at the end of the film, after Steve has died, when Diana lingers over his picture. It is particularly striking that this is not the theme we hear just before Steve sacrifices himself in the plane. Here, Gregson-Williams has employed Diana’s Amazon theme instead; Steve comes to grips with his fate by remembering her, not their relationship. By reducing the connection between Diana and the love theme, Gregson-Williams removes a pitfall that could have condemned her to being defined through her relationship with Steve, and that might have undermined the powerful effect she has had on her audiences as a strong female superhero.

Diana’s Journey

As a feminist film, Wonder Woman is not perfect. Among other failings, it continues to stereotype its non-white characters, and it lacks a necessary intersectional approach. What’s more, Diana does choose in the end to strategically repress her voice in the service of humanity, living undetected in the human world, wearing the fashions expected of her and taking a quiet job as an archivist, only appearing again (so far) when the other superheroes cannot overcome a monster on their own (as in Batman v. Superman). But Wonder Woman also presents a strong woman who is unapologetic about who she is and what she aims to achieve, who can go neck-to-neck with the boys, surrendering her agency and sense of self only as she chooses. Gregson-Williams’ soundtrack emphasizes this, supporting a strong femininity that nurtures and inspires others while remaining confident in its own power.

Jessica Getman is the Managing Editor for The George and Ira Gershwin Critical Edition at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Her work in film musicology focuses on television production, science fiction, and the original series of Star Trek.

Friday, June 23, 2017

In her first solo outing, Diana (Gal Gadot) faced the daunting task of defeating the very concept of war itself. Raised by Amazons on an isolated island, she is thrown into the thick of World War I when American spy Steve Trevor crashes his plane off the coast. She takes Steve’s description of “the war to end all wars” to mean Ares, the enemy of the Amazons, is to blame, and she leaves the island to fight him, believing overcoming the god of war will put a stop to the conflict.

Running parallel to this urgent mission are the three Herculean feats of the film. First, Wonder Woman buttressed the sagging DC Extended Universe (DCEU) franchise by providing it with a much-needed, critically-acclaimed blockbuster. Second, it was the biggest opening yet for a film with a female director (Patty Jenkins), highlighting Hollywood’s ongoing problems with structural sexism. But most importantly, Wonder Woman proved that superhero films starring women are commercially viable.

Laying the groundwork for this success was Gadot’s scene-stealing performance in last year’s Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (dir. Zack Snyder), one of the film’s few elements to emerge unscathed from the pileup of negative reviews. Undoubtedly, part of what made Diana stand out was the earworm theme Hans Zimmer and Junkie XL wrote for her.[1] In its definitive form (“Is She with You?”), the melody is basically an arpeggiated E minor triad decorated by A♯/B♭. In combination with the D♮ of the bass line, this ear-catching ♯4 gives it an octatonic flavor. The transcription below (from “No Man’s Land”) consists entirely of pitches drawn from the OCT1-2 collection.[2] The very features that make this theme pop out—alongside the ♯4, the theme’s 7/8 meter (2+2+3), and electric guitar timbre (played by an electric cello)—exoticize the character.

Inheriting this material, Wonder Woman composer Rupert Gregson-Williams faced his own unique challenge in building a world around an aurally pungent theme designed for a cameo appearance. In what is probably a wise choice, he uses the full theme sparingly. Borrowing a strategy from Zimmer and Junkie XL, he uses the 7/8 meter itself associatively, structuring the music for some of the action scenes around the distinctive meter (and sometimes the theme’s bass line) rather than overusing the melodic theme. Repurposing another strategy, he employs a slowed-down form of the theme’s initial fragment for early appearances of the hero. Beyond these techniques, Gregson-Williams has certainly been influenced by the Zimmer model of film composing. He supplies the film with slow-moving melodies over ubiquitous drum patterns, at times to great effect—the early scene on the island of Themyscira is all the more striking with the Zimmer brand of mythic music accompanying it.[3]

Although Gregson-Williams’s manipulation of “Wonder Woman” relies on strategies from the previous film, the way he situates it in relation to the film’s other themes differs from Zimmer and Junkie XL’s precedent. In Batman v Superman, the chromaticism of “Wonder Woman” both exoticizes and eroticizes the character. We first encounter her through Bruce Wayne’s gaze at Lex Luthor’s party. As Bruce sees her, we hear a slowed-down form of the initial fragment, emphasizing the ♯4 with an indulgent portamento. Here the electric cello emulates the duduk, an instrument often used to represent the Other in fantasy and science fiction films. In this context, the theme’s chromaticism casts her as a potential sexual partner for Bruce—it is a modern version of the fallen woman trope Kathryn Kalinak has described (1982, 1992). Later, when Bruce finds a photograph of her from 1918, we hear the theme in its definitive rock idiom, and we recognize that the first impression was misleading. But even then, her theme stands in stark contrast to the brooding, primarily diatonic themes of Superman and Batman.[4]

Such is not the case in Wonder Woman. Gregson-Williams makes a number of choices that serve to “unmark” and desexualize the character. First, he detaches the slowed-down initial fragment from the male gaze. We do not hear it, for example, when Steve first sees her. Instead we hear it at the very beginning of the film, separated from all visual associations with Diana herself.

Second, and admittedly problematically, Gregson-Williams scores the opening cue (“Amazons of Themyscira”) with exoticist orchestration. In Batman v Superman, the duduk timbre of “Wonder Woman” worked in tandem with the theme’s meter and chromaticism to portray Diana as a mysterious, foreign love interest. In contrast, the exoticist orchestration of the Amazon theme lends the island the aura of Greek antiquity, establishing it as a place out of time. When this theme attaches to Diana, it suggests the exotic timbre of “Wonder Woman” derives not only from her status as a sex object but also from her Amazonian background. If we are troubled by this Orientalizing gesture applied to the Amazons as a whole, we are also relieved that exoticism connotes something beyond sex appeal.

Finally, Gregson-Williams repurposes the Wonder Woman theme’s octatonic implications for themes linked to her main adversary: Ares, the god of war. In doing so, he hints at her secret heritage and destiny: as a demigod, she is the only one who can defeat him. The idiom of her personal theme becomes the language of the otherworldly in Wonder Woman.

The first new theme in this idiom is a low-register octatonic ostinato (in this example, from OCT 0,1), sometimes accompanied by a chromatic descent (see transcription from “Ludendorff, Enough!”).[5] This represents the film’s human baddies, Ludendorff and Dr. Poison (aka, Dr. Maru), who unwittingly carry out Ares’s destructive agenda. Later, when Diana first confronts Ludendorff (“Fausta”), Gregson-Williams combines their themes vertically, drawing attention to their shared octatonic implications.

The second theme is for Ares himself (see transcription from “The God of War”). Expanded from a three-note motive (bracketed), the climactic version sounds something like an off-kilter species counterpoint exercise. Like Wonder Woman’s and Ludendorff’s themes, Ares’s theme (the bass line) is drawn from the octatonic collection (in this transposition, from OCT 0,1) and emphasizes ♯4. As is the case with Ludendorff’s theme, the descant includes notes outside of the octatonic collection, although the repeated rising half steps suggest an octatonic inspiration. The idiom is perhaps best described as octatonic-infused minor. These three themes share an octatonic coloring because they represent powerful beings or, in the case of “Ludendorff,” the fulfillment of a god’s wishes.

In Batman v Superman, Zimmer and Junkie XL tapped into a long history of scoring love interests with chromatic music to mark Diana as Other. In Wonder Woman, Gregson-Williams draws more specifically on the theme’s octatonic implications, generating a small family of themes linked to gods. Although Gregson-Williams did not compose the Wonder Woman theme, he recontextualized it, and in doing so, he created a new world where Diana is no longer just a sex object, but also a god.

Grace Edgar is a third-year PhD student in the historical musicology program at Harvard University. Her primary area of research is the representation of gender in Hollywood leitmotif films scores from the eighties to the present. She has presented her work at annual conferences of the Society for American Music and Music and the Moving Image.

[1] Following Matthew Bribitzer-Stull (2015), I reserve the term “leitmotif” for themes that develop in tandem with the drama and play a role in defining the larger musical structure. I consider the themes in Wonder Woman to be associative themes.[2] All transcriptions are mine.[3] This is sometimes called the “Media Venture” Sound, referring to the name of Zimmer’s former studio (Buhler, Neumeyer, and Deemer, 2015, 401). For more on the Zimmer sound, see Lehman, 2016. The prevalence of drumming in Batman v Superman has attracted the ire of soundtrack critics such as James Southall.[4] The most common version of Superman’s theme, initially presented in Zimmer’s score for Snyder’s Man of Steel (2013), is a trio of rising fourths: E-A, C-F, E-A. Batman’s main theme is an ascending minor triad (ex. A-C-E) that then ascends to the tonic (E-F-G-G#-A).[5] This theme is later transposed up a whole step to start on D.

Today, Musicology Now begins a series of Quick Takes on the summer blockbuster hit, Wonder Woman. Grace Edgar, Jessica Getman, Caitlan Truelove, and Naomi Graber will discuss the film, its score, and its overall soundscape in a set of interlinking essays that independently and together enrich our understanding of and appreciation for the film and for the superhero genre more broadly.

Friday, June 16, 2017

Among the many Marvel Cinematic Universe films to grace the summer screens over the last decade, The Guardians of the Galaxy stands out for its unique jouissance. Amidst epic space battles and fantastic aliens, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 1 and its recent sequel, Vol. 2, reveal down-to-earth characters and situations. For example, the main character, Peter Quill (Chris Pratt), is a charming man-child scarred by the death of his mother; Gamora (Zoe Saldana) and Nebula (Karen Gillan) play competitive sisters whose bickering takes sibling rivalry to new heights. Even Baby Groot (Vin Diesel) cannot help but evoke memories of an adorably frustrating toddler. In other words, under a sleek CGI veneer, Guardians of the Galaxy includes an utterly relatable cast, albeit in fantastic situations. The compiled soundtrack complements the narrative’s charm and leans into the film’s definitive component: nostalgia.

Director James Gunn along with music supervisor David Jordan convey this nostalgia by means of popular American and British music from the 1960s to early 1980s. Throughout both films, Peter listens to mix tapes made by his mother on an outdated Sony Walkman. By Vol. 2, his music has thoroughly infiltrated the ears of his crew, particularly Rocket Raccoon (Bradley Cooper) and Baby Groot. For Peter, the music signifies the essence of childhood, his relationship with his mother, and an idealized Earth brimming with 1980s pop culture. In both films, the mix tapes’ tunes float with ease between the realms of the diegetic world and the nondiegetic one; more than the orchestral score (composed by Tyler Bates), the pop songs do the musico-narrative heavy lifting.

“The Chain” operates on a meta-narrative level, alluding (for those in-the-know fans) to the complicated relationships between Fleetwood Mac’s members. Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham were at romantic odds with each other while recording the album Rumours, along with the failed marriage between John McVie and Christine McVie; Mick Fleetwood’s marriage was also floundering. In other words, “The Chain” is a musical moment in the career of a highly successful band that highlights interpersonal struggles and relationships, relationships forged of love, anger, hate…in essence that of family.

The song appears twice in Vol 2., first when Peter, Gamora, and Drax depart with Peter’s long-lost father Ego (Kurt Russell), leaving Rocket, Groot, and Nebula behind on the planet Berhert. The familiar opening dobro riff echoes in the diegetic world but by time the chorus kicks in, “If you don’t love me now/then you will never love me again/I can still hear you saying/you would never break the chain,” the music has entered the nondiegetic realm, enveloping the sound world as the Guardians family rifts physically and emotionally.

The song surfaces again at a climactic turn in the finale; Peter, having discovered Ego’s bent desire to destroy the galaxy and his treacherous murder of Peter’s mother, desperately fights his father. Yondu urges Peter to fight with his heart rather than his head. The sound world settles in a moment of quiet respite. Peter’s rage at the failure of his dream, his desire for a father explodes into a rousing fortissimo of chorus for “The Chain.” With no apparent source, this incarnation of the song seems to echo in Peter’s mind as meta-diegetic music. The song indicates the failed relationship between Peter and Ego; while the lyrics “damn your love, damn your lies” are not intoned at this moment, the music still resounds with the pain of a broken dream, a nostalgia for a David-Hasselhoffesque father that never was. But at the same time, “The Chain” also signals that the links between Peter and his true family, the Guardians, will never break. “The Chain” here encapsulates all the complexities of family ties at the core of the story.

For Peter and the others, music is the tie that binds them together. Yet the music is also a nostalgic dream; it fills the empty space left by wicked parents or departed loved ones. The stylistic juxtaposition of 1970s soft rock against rollicking space mêlées infuses The Guardians of the Galaxy franchise with a pleasurable retro pastiche. Yet for all the fizzy gloss, it is important to be wary of luxuriating in nostalgia. As we seek out escapism in summer blockbusters, we must not only “run in the shadows.” We must break the silence and interrogate the ways nostalgia, musical or otherwise, functions beyond the Cineplex. The fetishization of an idealized past is, at its core, as corrupt as Ego’s planet. It is time to break that chain.

Brooke McCorkle is an opera and film music scholar. She is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor of Musicology at SUNY-Geneseo. Her published and forthcoming works address topics as varied as Star Trek Concerts, Wagner reception in Japan, and ecological critiques in monster cinema. Please see here for more information.

Wednesday, June 14, 2017

About two-thirds of the way into the film, Ego (Kurt Russell) is trying to persuade his son, Peter (Chris Pratt), that they are two of a kind and deserve to be able to remake the universe in their own image. Knowing Peter’s fondness for popular music from Earth, Ego launches, like an irritating old rock critic, into a tiresome lyrical analysis of Looking Glass’s “Brandy.” Ego unpacks the lyrics only to find himself and his progeny: The two of them, Ego suggests, are the sailor of the song and the sea is the universe calling them to remake it. Peter, captivated, falls under Ego’s spell.

This is a strange turn for the film. Both Guardians of the Galaxy films make extensive use of popular music, of course, and Peter’s attraction to it is a defining element of his character inasmuch as it is bound up with the memory of his mother. If Ego found Peter’s mother attractive in part because she could recite the lyrics of “every song on the radio,” Peter’s relation to the music is, like the films, far more embodied: it moves him and his crew into action and into love. Drax (Dave Bautista) tells Peter that he and Gamora (Zoe Saldana) are incompatible because music does not move her to dance; Peter insists there is something unspoken between Gamora and him; and Gamora does ultimately dance with Peter. Music for Peter is not about nuggets of wisdom spun into the lyrics to be decoded as allegories of the self but about, as the first film put it, being “hooked on a feeling.”

The climax of the film—which combines the spectacle of patricide and quite literal Ego destruction—confuses this point. On the one hand, popular music, Fleetwood Mac’s “The Chain,” returns precisely when Peter needs it to break Ego’s spell. What I find especially interesting about this moment is that when I sat down to write this post I could not recall which song was used here even as I remembered very distinctly the narrative, dramatic work of the music, which seemed to well inside Peter until it burst out as he freed himself of Ego. Running completely counter to Ego’s decoding lyrics as an allegory of the self, it is music not lyrics that is decisive here.

On the other hand, the stakes of the music remain Peter’s ego and the representation of interiorization: the music, if it emerges like a feeling rather than an articulate thought, does not really relate to dance or even embodied action, as it usually does in the two Guardians films. The magical manic joy of Baby Groot dancing in the title sequence epitomizes the relation to music for the Guardians. Peter will eventually be moved to action, to reject the offer of divinity, and to defeat Ego, to be sure. But as Peter springs into action he does so not for the joy of musical movement or the intensity of feeling that the music conveys but to save a sense of self: to recover an ego that would not be subsumed by Ego. If Peter explicitly rejects the privilege of divine inheritance for the seeming embrace of the relatively mundane community of the Guardians, his self-made self, forged in the furnace of popular song, remains in its own way a distant reflection of Ego’s drive to find in popular song an allegory of the self.

James Buhler is on the faculty at the Sarah and Ernest Butler School of Music at the University of Texas at Austin, where he teaches courses on music and media. He writes frequently on music and film and is the author of Hearing the Movies, now in its second edition. He is active on Twitter (@jimbuhler), where many of the ideas in this short essay were first broached.

Monday, June 12, 2017

As I watched the beginning of Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol. 2, I was struck with a sense of déjà vu: the first three songs of Vol. 2 are used in exactly the same way as Vol. 1! Looking back at Vol. 1, the first three songs establish the connection between Peter Quill and his cassette Walkman, as well as the tight-knit and musical logic of the audiovisual editing style that persists throughout the film. So why would Vol. 2 mirror this introduction? And how does this mirroring anticipate the way popular music will be used in Vol. 2? I will compare the use of the first three songs in both introductions side-by-side to highlight their structural similarities and their meaningful differences.

Vol. 1 begins with a black screen and a sound advance of “I’m not in love” (1975) by 10cc. The title “EARTH 1988” appears in yellow on the black screen and then there is a cut to the cassette Walkman in Peter Quill’s (Wyatt Oleff) 8-year-old hands. He is in a hospital corridor waiting to go in and see his mother who is nearing the end of her life after a battle with a brain tumor. The writing on the cassette says “Awesome Mix Vol. 1” and the mix tape is tied to Quill as his possession. Now, Vol. 2 begins with a black screen and a sound advance of “Brandy (You’re a fine girl)” (1972) by Looking Glass. The shot cuts to Missouri in 1980, and this information is displayed as an overlay with each piece of information arrive in time with the music. The following scene shows Quill’s mother (Laura Haddock) and father (Kurt Russell) driving around listening to the song. In Vol. 1, it is revealed that Quill’s mother is the source of his mix tapes and so this opening sequence is returning origin and ownership to Quill’s mother. While Vol. 1, is the Guardians origin story, Vol. 2 is more focused on how Quill came into existence.

The next track in Vol. 1 is “Come and Get Your Love” (1973) by Redbone. Quill (Chris Pratt) is exploring the ruins on Morag in search of the Orb and once he reaches the interior of the ruins, he hits play on his Walkman and dances through the space. This cues the Guardians of the Galaxy title card and the credits. Cut to Vol. 2, and the second song used is “Mr Blue Sky” (1977) by Electric Light Orchestra. The Guardians are hired by The Sovereign to protect some batteries from an interdimensional space monster and Rocket is messing around trying to get the stereo system set up. Once the monster arrives and Quill, Drax (Dave Bautista), Gamora (Zoe Saldana), and Rocket (Bradley Cooper) rush off to fight it, Baby Groot (Vin Diesel) plugs in the cable and dances around the scene of destruction. While we are aware that fighting is occurring in the background, the camera is positioned in front of Baby Groot for the entire song and the title credits appear. Again, Vol. 2 is moving away from Quill’s ownership of the mix tape and the music it contains. Rocket is the main instigator of playing music during the fight and Baby Groot is the focus on the dance routine, rather than Quill.

The third song in Vol. 1, “Go all the way” (1972) by the Raspberries, is heard emitting from the stereo in Quill’s ship after he escapes Morag. This song functions mostly as background music but it continues tying the popular music soundtrack to the mixtape and Quill. In Vol. 2, the third song, “Lake Shore Drive” (1971) by Aliotta Jaynes Jeremiah, is also heard playing from the stereo in Quill’s ship as they leave The Sovereign. In Vol. 1, there is a shot of the mixtape in the stereo with the label “Awesome Mix Vol. 1” and in the sequel, there is the exact same shot but the mixtape reads “Awesome Mix Vol. 2.”

This repeat of the Vol. 1 introduction formula in Vol. 2 appears to be stating that popular music no longer belongs to Quill exclusively. The first film has established the creation of the Guardians and now the sequel is working to show how the team has grown together, which includes a broader ownership of popular music. While Quill meeting his father (Ego), and discovering that he is half god – which cues the return of “Brandy” from the introduction – leads to the climactic battle of Vol. 2, the strongest character development occurs in scenes with Rocket and Yandu (Michael Rooker). In their scenes, popular music is integral to their plans of deception and escape in a way that it is not with Quill in Vol. 2 – aside from when he uses his powers to defeat his father. For example, when Rocket and Yondu are taking out the Ravagers to escape the ship, Rocket asks Yondu is her has any of Quill’s old music lying around and they use it as an epic background to their escape. By mirroring the introduction of Vol. 1 in Vol. 2, the film anticipates from the beginning that Quill himself is no longer the primary focus and that popular music will belong to all of the Guardians.

Catrin Watts is a doctoral candidate in music theory at The University of Texas at Austin and a graduate of Queen's University, Belfast, where they wrote a master's thesis on the film collaborations between Joe Wright and Dario Marianelli. Catrin has presented papers on music and film at several conferences and their dissertation explores the relationship between musical characteristics of popular music and the kinetic action of contemporary action film.

Friday, June 9, 2017

Before their cinematic debut in the summer of 2014, the Guardians of the Galaxy were one of Marvel's lesser-known properties. While various teams of superheroes have operated under the title since the late 1960s, the particular fivesome featured in director James Gunn's Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 1 (2014) and Vol. 2 (2017) came together only in 2007. The ragtag band of erstwhile heroes were, behind the scenes, actually a ragtag band of secondary characters drawn from a variety of comic book titles. Peter Quill, aka “Star-Lord” (Chris Pratt), for example, made his debut in the anthology series Marvel Preview in 1976, and was quickly forgotten, while the lovable Groot (Vin Diesel) appeared originally as a villain in Tales to Astonish, Issue 13 (1960)--predating even Marvel stalwarts like Spider-Man (1962) and Iron Man (1963).

The films, particularly Vol. 1, thus have a great deal of work to do in order to establish these unfamiliar characters within a cinematic universe already populated with Captain America, Thor, The Incredible Hulk, and other recognizable figures. And while their alternating layers of sarcasm and sincerity place them among Marvel’s other recent experiments with tone and form--such as the lighthearted Ant Man (2015) and gritty, noir-influenced Netflix shows like Jessica Jonesand Luke Cage--the Guardians films still strive to cast their heroism on a scale as grand as The Avengers. One of the chief strategies employed by the creative team to accomplish these two goals gives the Guardians franchise its most recognizable sonic fingerprint: a signature blend of orchestral underscoring (composed for both films by Tyler Bates) with a compilation soundtrack of upbeat 70s popular music, which has served to identify the franchise in trailers and marketing materials.

Throughout the films, diegetic pop music is used by the Guardians to take control of the sonic and physical spaces they inhabit. For instance: Vol. 1 opens on eight-year-old Peter Quill sitting alone in a darkened hospital waiting area, staving off sadness by listening to "The Awesome Mix, Vol. 1": a tape compiled by his terminally ill mother (Laura Haddock). Peter, his walkman, and the mixtape are the ostensible source for the movie’s popular music, cementing him as a central character with broad control over the film’s aesthetic. Peter’s is also the only origin story we will see on-screen, and it is exceedingly brief. After his mother passes away, Peter flees the hospital into the night, and is immediately abducted by a menacing alien spaceship. After this short vignette, the now-familiar Marvel Studios wordmark seems to announce that we have just witnessed the birth of a new hero: the driving brass and rapidly flipping comic book pages compare Peter audibly and visibly with Spider-Man and Captain America.

Yet that annunciatory fanfare is also an ellipsis: having posited this origin, Guardians skips ahead by 26 years, and omits many of the familiar trappings of superhero origin myths. There are no training montages, nor sequences in which Peter Quill gleefully experiments with newfound abilities. Peter is chosen, as Joseph Campbell’s “monomyth” demands; yet he has no mentor, nor does he undergo trials or temptations and emerge as a champion ready to fight. Perhaps true to their long, separate histories within Marvel’s back catalog, the other characters arrive more or less fully formed, with pre-existing relationships--the duo of Rocket (Bradley Cooper) and Groot--or family histories--for the shirtless strongman Drax (Dave Bautista) and green-skinned gunslinger Gamora (Zoe Saldana). Rather than focusing on the origins of the five individual characters, Guardians tells the story of their coming together and becoming (in an oft-repeated locution from the films) not only friends, but family; the first Guardians is at its core a heist movie, rather than a heroic Romance.

In fact, it will be quite a while before we hear another heroic fanfare: the opening minutes of the movie set the mixtape and the orchestral score in opposition with one another. When next we see Peter Quill, he is an adult, playfully dancing through the caverns of an abandoned planet to the tune of Redbone’s “Come and Get Your Love” (1973) on his Walkman. Again, he accompanies his own actions through his headphones, claiming both physical and aural space in much the same way as his glowing mask and flashlight push back the planet’s oppressive gloom. The Walkman falls silent when the scene cuts away from him, and portentous low brass chords signal the arrival of hostile aliens, who wrest control of the soundtrack. The orchestral soundtrack itself is thus cast from the outset as hostile: the distinction between the pop music favored by our heroes, and the orchestral underscoring--which signals danger and struggle, and clings to the film’s blue-hued antagonists in a cloud of angry minor thirds--becomes a narrative problem to be solved. As our heroes learn to trust each other, reconcile their conflicting motivations (each initially wants the film’s “Macguffin,” a mysterious orb, for their own selfish reasons), and work as a team, the orchestral score gradually coalesces into a recognizable theme.

A glimmer of this theme first appears as Peter Quill escapes from his initial encounter (“Quill’s Big Retreat” on the original soundtrack recording), but the brief moment of triumph is quickly buried amid tense high-register strings and Quill’s own comic mishaps. When the Guardians meet one another, they engage in an extended chase and fight over the orb; further fragments of the theme are heard as they are booked for disturbing the peace, and serve a jail sentence that forces them to work together. Later in the film, as Peter gives an inspirational speech, we hear the theme treated more fully on the piano (“To the Stars”), signifying the group’s growing resolve. And at the outset of the film’s climactic confrontation, the theme appears in its full, heroic form (“The Final Battle Begins,” transcription by the author):

When we meet our heroes at the beginning of Vol. 2, their chemistry has clearly been established: we join them in the midst of a dangerous and highly lucrative assignment, preparing to fight a snarling, many-toothed monster. And while the characters still self-consciously employ diegetic pop music to underscore their own actions--Electric Light Orchestra’s “Mr. Blue Sky” (1977), the lead track from “The Awesome Mix, Vol. 2”--they now have the orchestra on their side as well: the soundtrack’s opening bars are a bold, clear statement of the heroic theme, as assertive and fully orchestrated as it was in its final guise from Vol. 1 (“Showtime, A-Holes”). This orchestral flourish performs much the same function as the brassy blasts that open James Bond or Star Wars movies: they signal that we have joined the action in media res, and that our heroes are busy doing the same thing they always do: save the day. The Marvel fanfare has already been heard, directly after the trailers and before a single frame of the sequel: with the team established as “galaxy savers” by the end of the first movie, there is no more myth-making labor for it to perform. Instead, the Guardians, now armed with both pop music and orchestral underscore, are off on another adventure.

William O’Hara received his Ph.D. in Music Theory from Harvard last week, and will join the faculty at Gettysburg College this fall. His research interests include tonal analysis, the history of music theory, and contemporary film and video game music. From 2013 to 2016, he served as an editorial assistant for JAMS.